True and that was an oversight on the part of the developers. Hell you could buy weapons with conquest and honor. You could even buy tier pieces at one point. I have yet to hear a good reason why you couldn't buy weapons with currency, especially given how bloody important the weapons are these days.

It's a far cry from the NO valor vendor guy next patch. The game has regressed painfully in so many ways for no reason what so ever. To the detriment of casual players everywhere.

Last edited by Glorious Leader; 2013-08-31 at 03:30 AM.

The hammer comes down:

Originally Posted by Osmeric

Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

It's very simple.
1. There is not the option to do anything but the easy-mode if you don't feel like commiting to a shedule.
2. How do other games do it better? By making sure that their core content of the game is something that can be played at everyone's convenience, at any time of the day, for as many hours a day, and not strictly depends on a raidshedule.
3. Flex might adress this somewhat... but even then. What's it going to be but another LFR? 2-3 hours to clear in a week? What to play during the rest of the week? Lack of stuff to do.

1. So you want to raid hard modes without committing to a schedule? Not going to happen unless you find a suitable guild.
2. Core content is PvE, you CAN do that at any time of the day for as many hours as you want.
3. You can try heroics? But no, wait, you don't want to commit to a schedule.

Well, the problem seems pretty clear to me.
You want the hardcore-experience without committing to the hardcore-schedule.
So you basically want a hardmode-LFR? Do I need to explain why that won't happen?

Sorry, but people very much still like addictive game and people still very much enjoy on some days or weekends to just sit in their rooms and play 12 hours in a row. I've a very casual friend, who plays games very casually, but he loves LoL. Some days he can only play 1 or 2 games, some none, but sometimes when he has the day off he LOVES being able to play 16 hours in a single day.

And?
There's a big reason why the entire gaming industry is focussing on the casual gamer that want to say "I'll be gaming for an hour or so.."
That's because most gamers are like that.

I asked the question before, but nobody answered, because they can't I guess. Imagine having 12 hours to play WoW today. What will you play that is meaningful content for you, core content of the game, stuff that would improve your character? Are you going to be able to fill up those 12 hours or are 8 hours of it going to be sitting in Orgrimmar?

I would level an alt.
No, I wouldn't, in reality I would just log out after two hours.

True and that was an oversight on the part of the developers. Hell you could buy weapons with conquest and honor. You could even buy tier pieces at one point. I have yet to hear a good reason why you couldn't buy weapons with currency, especially given how bloody important the weapons are these days.

It's a far cry from the NO valor vendor guy next patch. The game has regressed painfully in so many ways for no reason what so ever. To the detriment of casual players everywhere.

To be fair, I think the thing with weapons not being purchasable from vendors is a good thing. It makes finally getting a good one that much sweeter, almost like a rite of passage, plus it would be kinda weird if you could buy *all* your gear off VP vendors... and it wouldn't be that far from a reality if they did sell weapons. They did it in PvP and I think it ended up making a lot of people lose interest, especially in today's system, where the best player ends up getting the same rewards as some of the worst players, besides a mount or tabard lol.

To be fair, I think the thing with weapons not being purchasable from vendors is a good thing. It makes finally getting a good one that much sweeter, almost like a rite of passage, plus it would be kinda weird if you could buy *all* your gear off VP vendors... and it wouldn't be that far from a reality if they did sell weapons. They did it in PvP and I think it ended up making a lot of people lose interest, especially in today's system, where the best player ends up getting the same rewards as some of the worst players, besides a mount or tabard lol.

Actually the opposite is true. For a long time pvp rewards were so limited to such a higher bracket that it basically meant anybody just joining pvp got face rolled. The gap was so huge because well not everybody had all the conquest gear. Now they've corrected this in a number of ways and good on them but the situation your describing didn't hurt pvp. In fact in TBC pvp and arena became more popular than ever because well people would buy arena weapons to complete their pve sets.

If wrath and cataclysm are any evidence getting items off a vendor isn't weird for any significant amount of the community. It was such a natural and rewarding thing that people were choosing to do it in favor of raids.

The hammer comes down:

Originally Posted by Osmeric

Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

When has wow ever not had something to do? Also define casual. If by casual you mean someone who levels up ridiculously slow, doesn't know how to gear, gets confused by everything, and quits from being overwhelmed, I can see that happening. It's a social game, so if you never bother being social and learning how things work in the game world you're going to fail. Ironically enough, the fact that its a social game is the answer to what you feel are shortcomings in game design-- such as lack of personal character progression and depth. Those things are missing so that you as a player aren't handed everything and need to reach out to guilds, make friends and have fun. If the game were actually like that, so that somehow personal achievement actually mattered, the casual would be even more overwhelmed. Lol, my Shaman would have some type of sweet elite armor from my over ten thousand quests, the hundreds of thousands of raiding points, and honor points. The over 150k kills in pvp. My character would be legendary as fuck. If you're thinking more of custom / class tailored gameplay which would be substantial enough for an MMO, you'd be looking at adding at best quality 32 hours of game play to each class, plus further development in addition to all the other shit to do at level 90. I've always liked Blizzard's model, where in WoW, your character is what you make it to be. You have major professions, 3 minor profession minigames, pet battles, mounts to collect, reputations to earn, dungeons to explore, gear to loot, Horde to kill, quests, daily quests... Hundreds upon hundreds of hours of progression, all there if you want to do it.

The game isn't losing only casual players. It is losing bleeding-edge raiders by the boatload as well.

Well, by the rowboatload, since there are so very few such players.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
I hate these casual Fridays ruining it for real Fridays.

Well, the problem seems pretty clear to me.
You want the hardcore-experience without committing to the hardcore-schedule.
So you basically want a hardmode-LFR? Do I need to explain why that won't happen?

Yup. That is the problem and why there is no reason to subscribe to this game any longer. If the pinnacle of what they can offer as core content is LFR for those who don't want to commit to a shedule, then they simply are unable to appeal to the playerbase that wants to be able to play whenever it's convenient for them.

They are not meeting the expectations of the modern casual gaming market at all.

Yup. That is the problem and why there is no reason to subscribe to this game any longer. If the pinnacle of what they can offer as core content is LFR for those who don't want to commit to a shedule, then they simply are unable to appeal to the playerbase that wants to be able to play whenever it's convenient for them.

They are not meeting the expectations of the modern casual gaming market at all.

They met that expectation even less when sub numbers were at their highest in Wrath. Your point?
Show me a game that let's you pit 25 people together in a complex PVE encounter that requires voice real-time communication instantly, without the need to select your group members, without scheduling an opportune time for your optimal members, that still sports that difficulty and challenge for everyone.
Please. I beg you.

What a pointless thread. You simply don't like the core aspect of endgame WoW, fine then move on. The casual content of WoW isn't supposed to be heroic raiding, get a grip.

They met that expectation even less when sub numbers were at their highest in Wrath. Your point?

I don't believe that is true at all. Back then the market expectations for a game were different, but even in WotLK the core endgame content for casual playerbase seemed to be pugging 10m content, which wasn't face-roll easy, but still back then it was much easier to find pugs for it and the pugs eventually ended up clearing almost every tier before the next one released.

I remember reaching L90 on my shaman alt back in WotLK. And almost a day later I managed to join a TotC pug, which ended up killing half of the bosses only a week or two after the patch had gone live.

Also, if you're assuming that I'm expecting Blizzard to create an LFR for heroic raids you are quite wrong, but not completely. Such a thing could work only if there was a way of properly matching up people with the same progression and if there was a proper build-up from easy to hard content.

You clearly have no idea about how a raiding guild and the top raiding content works, probably have never experienced it. There's nothing wrong with that but you fail to realize that this content is tailored to exactly that.

The whole point of an MMO endgame is exactly that, the social experience of organizing and getting better together and beating challenging content. Not to hop into a queue anonymously and get epics thrown in your face. That, in fact, is the casual easily accessible content you talk about. Nothing wrong with it, it has it's place. It is not meant to replace the "real" raiding.

Heck, read the TBC nostalgia threads on the board, the main reason people moan about WoW today is because they feel that sense of social entitlement and achievement is gone. When you read through all the BS what remains at the end is that they had great social experiences and teams at some point. And now for some reason they don't. It's why they're wrong, because that experience can still be had and is just as available as always.

But back to you. You fail to grasp the core element of raiding, which I stated above. If you think "the market expectations" for an MMO are to hand you everything in the game on a silver platter with no effort required, you are mistaken. And I hate to pop your bubble, but pugs are going on all the time on all servers, just like they have been for the last expansions. People even pug for Heroic if they get the geared and experienced players for it.

If your server is so empty, or you can't find a guild or are unwilling to enter one to access that content, i'm sorry but that's not the game design's fault, nor is it the reason "casuals" as you say, are leaving the game.

You clearly have no idea about how a raiding guild and the top raiding content works, probably have never experienced it. There's nothing wrong with that but you fail to realize that this content is tailored to exactly that.

Please... I was in a world top #1-3 raidguild from Vanilla into WotLK. Compared to me you're probably green behind the ears and only raiding still because the magic of it didn't wear of for you yet after all those thousands of hours of raiding content to try and get world first kills. I'm just simply not interested in sheduling my RL time around a video game anymore, nor do I think that any succesful modern game can expect it's playerbase to do so.

You're just completely missing the point, or rather, unable to think outside of the box regarding all the different solutions they could offer without any of it interfering with the social aspect of the game or the purpose of a guild.

A game developer expecting it's core content to be about sheduling your playtime with others is completely clueless about the expectations of the customers today.

Please... I was in a world top #1-3 raidguild from Vanilla into WotLK. Compared to me you're probably green behind the ears and only raiding still because the magic of it didn't wear of for you yet after all those thousands of hours of raiding content to try and get world first kills. I'm just simply not interested in sheduling my RL time around a video game anymore, nor do I think that any succesful modern game can expect it's playerbase to do so.

You're just completely missing the point, or rather, unable to think outside of the box regarding all the different solutions they could offer without any of it interfering with the social aspect of the game or the purpose of a guild.

A game developer expecting it's core content to be about sheduling your playtime with others is completely clueless about the expectations of the customers today.

Wild claims, which also don't really have anything to do with the point ur trying to make. Your posts are all seeped with annoyance about the fact that you cannot currently access the hardest content in the game, or at least the more interesting content to you personally, without having to interact socially and schedule with other people. If you were so raid-savvy, you wouldn't be put off by this. I don't know anyone who is, noone wants to tackle the most challenging content with people they've never met before.

If you're not interested in scheduling your time around a videogame anymore, then don't. Nobody is forcing you to, yet that doesn't mean Blizzard should cater your game to you.

You've also compared WoW to esport games like LoL and CoD at one point. You do realize that most of that is scheduled as well? No leagues and tournaments without that. I'm afraid you'll have to engage and schedule for that too. Besides the point that the games have literally NOTHING to do with WoW in the slightest. Totally different audience i'm afraid.

It's ironic that you see me not thinking outside of my box when that's exactly what you're doing. And it'S even more hilarious calling the Blizzard dev team clueless because you're butthurt you can't raid heroic without arranging yourself with other people.

A game developer expecting it's core content to be about sheduling your playtime with others is completely clueless about the expectations of the customers today.

That's what LFR is for.

You can't get rid of schedules without sacrificing other things such as.. you guessed it.. the challenge!
Today's gamer expects "oh, I can queue for it? I BETTER BE ABLE TO CLEAR IT WITHOUT DYING ONCE OR I'M UNSUBBING."

The problem with playing anytime you want is that the solo playstyle is ultimately unsatisfying.

“Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.” -- St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
I hate these casual Fridays ruining it for real Fridays.

Actually the opposite is true. For a long time pvp rewards were so limited to such a higher bracket that it basically meant anybody just joining pvp got face rolled. The gap was so huge because well not everybody had all the conquest gear. Now they've corrected this in a number of ways and good on them but the situation your describing didn't hurt pvp. In fact in TBC pvp and arena became more popular than ever because well people would buy arena weapons to complete their pve sets.

If wrath and cataclysm are any evidence getting items off a vendor isn't weird for any significant amount of the community. It was such a natural and rewarding thing that people were choosing to do it in favor of raids.

The bracket thing IMO was what brought out the best in avid PvP'ers, the whole spirit of competition thing.... it meant losing a match could potentially be a big deal. Now they just rain epics on you lol. I do think that a PvP'er that plays well should have better rewards then a guy that does not (especially with afk'ers), as gear is the only real sense of progression that PvP'ers have in the game. I think it brought out a new element to PvP - skillful play, you really had to put in effort to get a PvP weapon in wrath, I remember when I got my 1800 weapon my buddies and I were in vent going CRAZY. You don't get many moments like in the game, I think they should try to bring some of that stuff back.

Definitely hurt PvP though, as nowadays a lot less arena players take it seriously, most of the time it's just log in for 2's and an hour later you're done for the week. TBC arena was popular because the weapons were very good in PvE as well (they were good in other expansion, but not nearly as powerful). And I'm all for valor items being in the game, but it seems like you may be missing out on the fun parts if all you are doing is grinding valor off of heroics.

You can't get rid of schedules without sacrificing other things such as.. you guessed it.. the challenge!
Today's gamer expects "oh, I can queue for it? I BETTER BE ABLE TO CLEAR IT WITHOUT DYING ONCE OR I'M UNSUBBING."

Yeah, I think WoW has put too much focus on pleasing players that weren't happy with the game for one reason or another. It is meant to be a game where you socialize, meet friends, and it's one where you gotta put in some time. The problem is in the process, they change the game so much that the original fan base doesn't have nearly as much fun with the new version as they have with the old stuff - driving off long time players.

Please... I was in a world top #1-3 raidguild from Vanilla into WotLK. Compared to me you're probably green behind the ears and only raiding still because the magic of it didn't wear of for you yet after all those thousands of hours of raiding content to try and get world first kills. I'm just simply not interested in sheduling my RL time around a video game anymore, nor do I think that any succesful modern game can expect it's playerbase to do so.

You're just completely missing the point, or rather, unable to think outside of the box regarding all the different solutions they could offer without any of it interfering with the social aspect of the game or the purpose of a guild.

A game developer expecting it's core content to be about sheduling your playtime with others is completely clueless about the expectations of the customers today.

Can't believe you are still here baffling on.

Every game at the top level requires a schedule.

WTF do you want WoW to do with raids? If you can do them anytime you want, it is too easy, LFR for example.

You keep mentioning CoD and LoL, yes you can login by yourself and play anytime you want, they are not that fun playing by yourself though. Those games also have SCHEDULED tournaments if you want to play at the top level. If you want to play ranks with friends, you have to agree to be on at certain times.

They are also PVP games, guess what, you can play PVP in WoW anytime you want. Play Arena for a ranking system in 2v2 as all you need is one other person, shouldn't have to do much scheduling around that.

This is a MMO, to do the hardest content a MMO provides requires a group of people. When you require a group of people you need to arrange a time to all be online. It's what MMOs are all about, group play, not solo play, which is what you want.